A fight over "invisible" helicopters

The U.S. has accused Russia of aiding Syria's attack on civilians by selling Damascus new helicopters. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin may discuss the issue during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20.

The deliveries of Russian helicopters to Syria has
evolved into an international mystery. The U.S. State Department keeps
insisting that Moscow has shipped attack
helicopters to Syria for use
by Damascus
against civilians; the Russian Foreign Ministry denies the allegations.

Geopolitical agenda:

Although U.S. Department of State didn’t give any clear evidence that Russia shipped to Syria its helicopters, it also refused to officially repudiate its statement. It may be one of the key issues during the negotiations between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Barack Obama at the upcoming G20 summit in Mexico.

“We are concerned about the latest information we have that
there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia
to Syria,”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on June 12. Commenting on this
statement, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: “I think the
concern we have is that the arms the regime has are not being used for external
defense. They’re being used to kill their own citizens, especially civilians –
women and children and men.”

The U.S. Department of Defense refused to back the State
Department, telling reporters that it has no information about Russia supplying attack helicopters to Syria. Capt.
John Kirby, U.S. Department of Defense spokesman, told a media briefing: “I see
no reports about shipments of Russian helicopters to Syria.”

When asked repeatedly to confirm whether Clinton’s
accusations mean that Russia
was shipping new attack helicopters to Syria, White House spokesman Jay Carney
did not give a direct answer. “I have no specific reports on this matter,”Carney
told the media.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also denied that Russia is supplying new attack helicopters to Syria. “I said
a few days ago that we were fulfilling previously signed and paid-for contracts,”
Lavrov said during a press conference in Tehran.
“All these contracts have to do exclusively with air defense systems.”

Yet the State Department insists that new helicopters are on
their way to Syria.
Asked whether Lavrov could be wrong, Nuland said: “I would encourage him to
check with his own authorities.”

A New York Times report clarified the situation somewhat. “Pentagon
sources suggested that Mrs. Clinton was referring to a Russian-made attack
helicopter that Syria
already owns but has not yet deployed to crack down on opposition forces. While
these helicopters, known as Mi-24s, are flown by Syrian pilots, Russia supplies
spare parts and maintains them,” read an article published June 12.

This “exchange of civilities” between the foreign offices of the
two countries might as well continue; yet the verbal swordplay between Clinton
and Lavrov implies something else.

Related:

Last week, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee demanded
that the Pentagon impose sanctions on Russia’s Rosoboronexport, the state
agency that sells arms. Sen. John Cornyn (Republican-Texas) expressed his
“grave concerns” in a letter Monday to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:
“Lawmakers are deeply troubled that the Defense Department might knowingly do
business with a firm that has facilitated the mass atrocities in Syria … Such actions by Rosoboronexport warrant
renewal of U.S.
sanctions against it, not a billion-dollar contract.”

In 2010, the U.S. government
awarded the Russian firm a contract to supply 21 Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters
worth a total of $550 million for Afghanistan’s forces. Shortly after
the tender, American helicopter builder Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. filed an
official protest, accusing the military of failing to comply with the tender
terms and the Buy American Act and sought to have the contract annulled. The
protest was rejected at that time. Later on, 17 lawmakers requested that the
secretary of defense to put an end to purchases of Russian helicopters. The
recent attacks on Russian arms must be seen in this context.

MI17. Source: Press Photo

On June 12, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
George Little defended the contract, saying that Afghanistan
required reliable defense forces and that the contract should be treated
separately from the concerns over possible arms deliveries to Syria.

Konstantin Makyienko, assistant director of the Center for
Analysis of Strategies and Technologies has no doubt that the current media
assault against Rosoboronexport “is directly connected with the attempts by the
American industrial and regional lobby to thwart the Pentagon contract for Russian-made
Mi-17 helicopters.”

Time will tell whether there is a connection between Clinton’s remarks and
those made by the lobbyists. In the meantime, Reuters reported on June 14 that
the Pentagon had notified Congress of plans to purchase 12 more Mi-17V-5
helicopters from Rosoboronexport for the Afghan military, in addition to
earlier supplies.